Healthy teeth
Posted: Wednesday, March 5th, 2008
You may be wondering what healthy teeth has to do with sustainability and the environment and why I would write about them. I am writing about healthy teeth because sustainability is also about human health and the increased awareness of protecting our bodies against harmful substances. Just as we want to protect our global natural environment we want to protect our individual bodily environments for a healthy and long life. A healthy mouth is just as important as a healthy body or clean air and water.
Besides brushing at least twice a day and flossing your teeth, diet plays a large role in having healthy teeth and gums. We all know that drinking soda and eating candy are bad for our teeth, but what most people are not aware of are the harmful effects of drinking fluoridated water and using fluoride toothpaste.
Many years ago I found information on the negative effects of fluoride on the body and stopped buying fluoride toothpaste and started buying filtered water. I am now lucky enough to live in a neighborhood that has unfluoridated and unchlorinated tap water, but the majority of people living in urban areas have fluoridated tap water.
Why is fluoride so harmful but our dentists tell us it is necessary for healthy teeth? The simple answer to this question comes down to money, consumer demand, and a good marketing campaign. As for the fluoride, “only calcium fluoride occurs naturally in water; however, that type of fluoride has never been used for fluoridation. Instead what is used over 90 percent of the time are silicofluorides, which are 85 times more toxic than calcium fluoride.” (Shattuck, 2001) Read the full article at the Weston A. Price Foundation site. Another site with more information on fluoride is the Fluoride Action Network.
I mentioned unchlorinated water also, but I will cover this topic in another post.
I think our bodies are an extension of our environment or vise versa. So within, so without. We are connected to our environment through our own environment(s) inside of us. In a way there is no external or internal environment, there is no environment at all. That idea is just a convenient figment of our imagination and a method for communication with each other. And all of it is very complex, so complex it’s simple. But I’m getting off topic here…
If you don’t care about your internal environment then consequently your external environment will suffer as well as the reverse of that concept.
Bottom line is that like so many other things government and corporations have the smallest regard for human health and well being and the highest regard for their own profit. Sad. But. True. So what are you going to do?
March 8th, 2008 at 10:54 am